Can Houston bridge the gap between science and faith?

Over the weekend, the Houston Chronicle published a commentary by Elaine Howard Ecklund that calls for Houston’s clergy and scientific community to engage in a “radical dialogue” that would put the city “at the vanguard of discussions about religion and science within communities of faith.”

Ecklund, who is a Rice scholar at the Baker Institute and is the director of the Program on Religion and Public Life at Rice University’s Institute for Urban Research, is well-qualified to discuss the topic.

Ecklund says Houston is uniquely positioned to build bridges between science and faith because it is “home to some of the largest congregations in the country and also rising in science infrastructure, particularly in medicine and the energy industry.”

What’s really annoying to me is the assumption that there’s conflict between religion and science.

I’m a Christian who believes the Biblical story of creation is a marvelously constructed allegory for the way God created the Universe in an explosion of light, and everything in it over many billions of years.

Modern science tells us that’s how it happened.

And God said “Let there be light. And there was light.” Science has verified that account through its acceptance of the Big Bang Theory of the beginning of the Universe.

Evolution is the genetic mechanism God installed in his living creatures so they could survive in a changing universe by adapting to changing conditions.

The one thing we know for absolute certain about our universe is that it is always changing. How dumb would God have to be to create humans and animals, but give them no way to survive as conditions change? I have no problem knowing that modern humans evolved from lower primates, who themselves evolved from lower forms of life.

I know many of my fellow Christians can’t accept that and think it’s heresy. I prefer to see the long evolutionary chain that led to modern humans as proof of God’s total involvement at all times in our long history over countless milennia.

Every time we turn around science is verifying the truth of God’s creation, and the unimaginable magnitude of the universe. I see absolutely no conflict between science and religion.

Given the incredible historical philanthrophy Houston’s oil and land legends have given for medical research (Baylor, Methodist et al) and also the churches that they were all members of for generations, it’s been bridged before.

Too bad some people are so ignorant to that fact. It’s the silent truth that made Houston great. But then again, one would have to research it until their eyes are opened and quit sounding so ignorant.

There is a fundamental epistemological gap between science and (theistic) religion that can never be resolved, and it is the basic difference between empiricism and faith.

That being said, scientists (particularly atheists and agnostics, whose representation increases with scientific accomplishment) can and should do much more to build bridges to religious people–so as to dispel myths and stereotypes, to promote areligious moral thinking, to promote more clear-headed thinking in general, and to advocate for science education. In other words, scientists should build bridges so that religious individuals can cross them and become better people in the process. It would be the “sciencely” thing to do!

Many religious people have such distorted views about how the world works and what makes for goodness in people, and their distortions about science and atheists/agnostics are often downright perverse. Those who actually understand science, know people who do science, and have friends who are atheists and agnostics have far less distorted views.

Scientists and non-theists could also benefit from getting to know religious people. However wrong their ideas may be, many of them are nevertheless kind-hearted people.

(To anyone who took offense, none was intended. Clearly my views are anti-religious, but I have nothing against religious people, themselves.)

Depends, will religious types accept truth and reason or continue believing myths. Science answers questions about religion, debunks the myths if you will (Earth was never completely flooded like the 40/40 story, Earth revolves around the sun, not the other way around, Earth is 4.5+/- billion years old, not 6,000), religion offers nothing to science. If you went back 500 years with the information that we know now, you would be burned as a heretic by religious people who had faith and KNEW that what they believed was the truth. So, what do you think we will learn about our reiligions in the next 500 years?

It would be great if more religious folk were like filioscotia, but that does not seem to be the case.

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The mission of the nonpartisan James A. Baker III Institute for Public
Policy is to help bridge the gap between theory and practice of public
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and students, the institute seeks to improve the debate on selected public
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evaluation of public policy. The institute’s more than 20 programs, which include research, speaking series, events and special projects, have helped attract a host of prominent leaders who provide their views and insights on key issues.